Brookfield and NextEra partner to develop a $100B, 1.2GW+ AI data center campus at a former DOE uranium-enrichment site in Kentucky, set to open in 2032
Wall Street JournalRobb M. Stewart
Context & Ripple Effects
Brookfield is extending an AI-infrastructure buildout that previously included a planned Swedish data center, while NextEra brings a power-sector partner to a project defined as much by energy access as by computing capacity.
Brookfield and NextEra shift the former DOE Paducah site toward a long-dated AI-data-center development, tying a $100B proposed investment and more than 1.2GW of planned capacity to a 2032 target.
The partners must now turn a power-rich, complex former industrial site into a financeable campus, making power delivery, construction sequencing, and customer commitments the immediate execution tests.
Second-order effects
The project raises the strategic value of large energized or potentially energizable sites, pressuring rival developers to secure comparable locations and credible power partners earlier in the development cycle.
AI customers gain another prospective source of very large capacity, but its later delivery profile means nearer-term projects—including the Kentucky facility leased by Anthropic—remain important for workloads needed before 2032.
Third-order effects
If these projects advance, AI campuses will increasingly be developed like long-duration utility infrastructure: capital-intensive, power-led, and dependent on coordinated developers, energy providers, and anchor tenants.
The growing gap between announced multi-gigawatt ambitions and delivered capacity will make execution credibility—not merely planned megawatts—a key differentiator among AI-infrastructure platforms.
The trend: AI compute is pushing data-center development toward utility-scale, long-duration projects built around scarce power-ready sites and specialized infrastructure finance.
@sonderling47 Acting Secretary Keith Sonderling on x
When American @ENERGY is dominant, American Workers are dominant and thanks to @POTUS' America First Energy Agenda, we're producing more natural gas and good-paying jobs for all Americans. 🇺🇸
.@SecretaryWright on data centers: “Blue states have 50% higher electricity prices than red states... Places that develop data centers...those are the places that will see electricity prices go down, not up.” [video]
“The more than $100 billion privately funded investment, one of the largest in Kentucky's history, is expected to create approximately 8,000 construction jobs and 600 permanent jobs.” https://www.energy.gov/...
.@SecretaryWright announces a redevelopment of @ENERGY's Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky: “There will be a lot of new natural gas power plants, a large data center, thousands of jobs, and tens of billions of dollars of investment in rural Western Kentucky.” 🇺🇸 [video]
@StockMKTNewz a decommissioned uranium enrichment site with existing grid infrastructure and transmission already built is close to a perfect site. this is the reuse case people say they want, brownfield instead of farmland, and paired with its own generation. fascinating
The privately funded effort, which will include construction of 2 gigawatts of natural gas-fired power, comes as the Trump administration seeks to address surging power demand from data centers that are provoking considerable political opposition.
SCOOP: Power utility NextEra Energy Inc. is teaming up with Brookfield on a more than $100 billion transformation of a shuttered Energy Department Cold War uranium-enrichment facility in Kentucky into a data center campus with a generating plant.